


the dead do not weep

by MashpotatoeQueen5



Series: let's visit our own graves and call it mourning [1]
Category: 6 Underground (2019)
Genre: And I LIKED him, And Plot Bunnies, Angst, Character Death, Character Study, Complicated Characters, Complicated Relationships, Don't ask me how, Found Family, Gen, Give it a chance and a cause will swallow you whole, Give it a chance and life will do it too, Grief/Mourning, Grieving, Guilt, Hurt No Comfort, I have feelings, I made up a name for Six, I watched this movie soley for the found family and skipped all the gorey parts, In a way that is realistic, Introspection, It's not mentioned a lot, Morally Ambiguous Character, Mourning, One could be trying harder, One is trying, Orphans, Poor Life Choices, Pre-Canon, Regret, Six is dead boi, Soldiers, Spoilers, Survivor Guilt, Team as Family, The Complications of Humanity, The gay stuff snuck it's way in, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, This is basically me trying to write a character I don't relate to all that well, Young Love, Youth, and human, but just so you're not confused, runaways - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-01
Updated: 2020-01-01
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:19:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22065391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MashpotatoeQueen5/pseuds/MashpotatoeQueen5
Summary: Six dies with a metal bar to his chest and a whole life ahead of him he'll never get to see.We never find out his name.But we know that he was young, and reckless, and he signed up for a cause that swallowed him whole. We know that he lived, once, and that now he is mourned.(This is a story to fill in the gaps, before and after and in between.)
Relationships: Four | Billy/Six (6 Underground) Background
Series: let's visit our own graves and call it mourning [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1621720
Comments: 34
Kudos: 101





	the dead do not weep

**Author's Note:**

> I... don't know if I really liked this movie. I'm not one for violence. I'm not one for gore. I'm asexual as all hell. I didn't like their route with choosing their villain, for obvious reasons.
> 
> I don't like that through their actions a lot of innocent people died. Hell, I didn't really enjoy a lot of the more guilty people dying. 
> 
> But I love the found family trope more than I can say, and I thought it might be interesting to write a character I really didn't relate to very much in any way (One). So this rambling mess is the result.

His name was Connor, once.

On his worst days, One thinks back and rolls the name over his tongue, unspoken syllables made to wash away the guilt stinging his gut. The Driver - he was a number, the last of their merry crew of six: a pawn, a player designed to complete the mission, whatever it takes. Six agreed to the terms, he knew the stakes, and it wasn’t One’s fault.

It wasn’t.

But the name… it still lingers on his tongue, acidic, burning, heavy.

(One has worst days all the time.)

Six is just turned twenty years old, when One finds him, an orphan street rat working for the mob as a getaway driver, just trying to get by. He’s been behind the wheel since he was fourteen. He’s been doing small time crime even longer. 

And he’s good. He’s _very_ good.

He’s green around the ears and ADHD as hell, is too soft on all his edges and perhaps too kind. He’s immature, and naive, and brash and rash and at times overconfident.

But man alive, can he _drive._

So One finds him, chooses him, sets up chess pieces up on his board of blind man’s chess. He has a strategy, a ridiculously oversized bank account, and a metric ton of sheer will power to pull him through. He’s been planning this for days, months, _years._ He’s been leading up to this moment his whole life. 

A promise of a consistent place to crash, a small incentive of spending money, a guarantee that he’s going to help change the world for the better, and Six agrees all too easily. 

But we all want to be something, when we’re twenty and first trying to truly find our feet in the world. We all want to be apart of a cause, something greater than ourselves. One had poured the opportunity into this man’s lap, knowing all too well he was more of a child, not even fully grown.

Because here is the thing about causes: they swallow you up. They eat you alive, because a cause is something you give your all for, until there is nothing left but blood and bone and sweat.

And it’s true that One made it clear that it was dangerous, and Six had said he understood. It’s also true, however, that it is so simple to feel invincible from life’s deadly clutches when you’re twenty and desperate and young.

It is youth’s great truth and great tragedy.

It’s greater truth and tragedy is that everyone always figures it out too late.

Six signs his name on the imaginary dotted line, stages a crash, and is reborn as a ghost. 

One allows it.

Six’s key role in the first couple of months has far more to do with smoothing out the more… _dangerous_ characters of their rough edges. He’s softer, more lighthearted, and he bounces off snark with a steady stream of jokes and chatter. He’s immature, easily grossed out, and can and will talk your ear off about different models of cars at any given moment.

Fidgety. Talkative. Fun. 

_(Far, far too young.)_

Part of the reason One chose him is because of this, because he comes across as just so _young._ He’d been hoping that the immaturity would make Four keep his distance, the older man (boy) being more professional and serious about his craft, but he underestimated the power of two twenty-something year olds kept in close proximity with no other options.

All too soon, they’re fast friends.

They pull pranks. They watch _Die Hard._ They make bad food and laugh at bad jokes and drive One absolutely _crazy._ They goof off during training and talk about things they might do one day. 

(They want to change the world.)

One watches them grow close with a careful eye. Watches the way Six laughs and leans in too close and grins too wide. Watches the way Four snarks and shows off and doesn’t complain when Six nods off and drools on his shoulder during the boring documentaries Two is so very fond of. Three makes kissy faces. Five coos, eyes teasing. Four swears at them and sasses them and does it all in a whisper and very, very still so as to not wake Six up. 

Nothing happens, of course. There’s no time. There’s too much to get done. They have to be prepared, have to be _perfect,_ if they’re going to pull this off.

(But One watches. He’s certain, if they have long enough, something might grow from it. But that’s the cruel twist of it: they have no idea how little time they have left. How quickly beautiful things shatter and fall apart.They’re young and invincible, and pinnacle examples of youth and it’s greatest tragedy.)

Six is too open about his life before. But he never had much of a life in the first place.

Six is too invested in his life _now._ In building it up. In making the most of it. This is more than a cause, to him, more than a mission. He’s carving a family out of these broken people with bloodied palms and aching weighed down hearts and-

One allows it.

Six does this thing. This tiny little thing, and One notices, because it’s who he is. He does this thing where he stares at their entire group- hitman and murderers and thieves, dirty criminals, lost causes with ugly souls and hearts that have been chipped into stone on all their rough edges- and he just… smiles. 

Bright. Crooked. _Brilliant._

He does this _thing_ where he looks at you like you have been redeemed for all your faults, like lost causes can be found and cleaned and kept and cherished.

Ridiculous, obviously. Dangerous. 

(One has blood on his hands, in his veins. It is not his own. He was selfish and rich and uncaring, and now he cares so _bloody_ much and it’s eating him alive.)

(He gave everything to his cause. Even the things that were not his to sacrifice.)

Six does this thing and One hates it, hates it, hates it. This is a man who spent years of his life building up a box of aching spitting cruel truths and hooked the heavy thing to his heart. He has killed and snarled and done ugly, terrible things. His hands are covered in so much blood.

He does not deserve to be redeemed. 

(This is what a cause does: it _eats. you. up_. And you let it.)

He does not deserve to be cared for, or favoured. He has a job to do, a mission. He spent so much of his life in a glass house and never once thought to look out the window until fate got so tired it blew the whole thing up.

He does not deserve it. 

But One is only human. He is only human and even when he was young he was isolated and lonely. Glass houses are not the place to expose vulnerabilities, to form friendships (weak spots), and so people never did.

Humans are built for connections. The first thing babies do is cry out to be held, to be nourished, to be loved. This is not a coincidence.

And that goddamn _smile-_

One allows it. 

Six does his duty. He drives, he drives fast. He drives bright and brilliant and crooked. He drives like his smile, as if making it to the finish line might mean some sort of redemption. 

But he never makes it there. That’s the whole thing, isn’t it? He _never makes it there._

But he makes it close enough, close enough that they can run, limp, and crawl the rest of the way.

That is what matters. That is all that is _supposed_ to matter.

One made these people numbers, reduced them to pieces on a board of blind man’s chess. He did everything in his considerable power to not care about his soldiers, his playing cards, his pawns, and his bleeding heart cared anyways.

(The cause, it swallowed that little boy whole. It ate him up alive and One allowed it to happen. On his worst days, he thinks about it.)

(He has worst days all the time.)

_Take a box. Fill it up with everything you hate in the world. Lock it up and throw away the key._

_No, wait-_

_That is how you build glass houses._

_Try this: Take a box, fill it up with everything you hate in the world. Obsess over it. Rage. Hang that heavy blasted thing from your heart and feel the hooks tear into you, make that pounding organ of blood and muscle scream with it, spew red over it, and never, ever forget._

_Take another box. Fill it with the things that make you care. That make you gentle. That make you weep for the unfairness of it, for the beauty of it, for the humanity of it all._

_Lock_ that _up and throw away the key. Hearts made to carry the cruelty of all the world have no room for soft and fragile things._

_This is how you build houses of stone._

_(Do you want to know the truth?_ Both houses are ugly, fragile things. They will both break just as easily when fate gets so tired it blows the whole thing up.)

_(Do you want to know another truth?_ Both of One’s boxes contain a boy with a life ahead of him he’ll never get to see, a bar through a heart that believed it was invincible and a death too quick to scream. His cause ate that young man up and he hates it, he hates it, he _hates_ it-)

 _(Here is a final truth:_ Humans are sacks of blood and bones and sweat, yes, but the terrible, beautiful thing about people is that they will always be more than their fragile parts. They are filled with hopes and dreams and expectations. They are wives and husbands and daughters and sons. They will connect with anyone and anything, because people are made to love, and love, and _love_ _.)_

(Except when they’re dead. Then they’re just corpses. There is nothing more for that.)

His name was Conner, once. 

He was a young man. A boy. A child. 

He was damn good at driving and that is what killed him.

 _(A cause ate him up, old man,_ your cause _, and you poured that option onto his lap knowing he would say yes, knowing he felt too invincible to understand-)_

He liked video games. And pizza. He wanted an earring but was terrified of needles. He wanted a family and wasn’t around long enough to see it happen. 

He was twenty-one years old when he died. He was a young man. He was hardly grown. 

He wanted to change the world and that is what killed him.

(The cause swallowed him up whole. It ate him alive. Blood and bones and sweat and all.)

(One allowed it.)

_Here is the truth about people: we do not mourn bodies. We mourn memories. We mourn stories. We mourn could-have-been’s. There are no regards for the decaying flesh hiding under earth or drifting out to sea. There is no grief._

_We mourn all the things that the dead could have meant to us, given time. We mourn all the things that we know the dead could have meant to the world, given a chance. We mourn for ourselves, for those of us left behind._

_Grief is such a selfish, human thing. The dead do not weep for the living. They are dead._

_And humanity moves on, and marks graves, and revisits. We mourn memories, not bodies, and it is this beautiful, shattered thing we keep in our chests._

A question: If we are mourning memories, and we remember, does it mean that the people we grieve for are still alive in some small way?

An answer: Does it matter? We will weep either way.

His name was Conner, once. He died for One’s cause.

The name is acid on his tongue. Burning and heavy.

On his worst days, One thinks of him, tries to string up all the _could-have-been’s_ in a long straight line. He rolls that burning, aching name off his tongue. That young man, that boy, that _child,_ he was always more than a number. He was a person. He lived. 

Someone deserves to remember. Someone _has_ to remember. It is how people live even when they’re dead. So, on his worst days, One says it.

(Some might call it repentance. Some might call it grief. Perhaps it is both.)

On his worst days, One says it. On his worst days, he weeps.

One has worst days all the time.

**Author's Note:**

> If anyone needs a tissue, I've got plenty to spare. Either way, hope you enjoyed. <3


End file.
